


chasing clouds

by stellatiate



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8779282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: “A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.”  -—allura & shiro, misc.





	1. know it's alright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pixie_rings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixie_rings/gifts).



> i have been meaning to do this but i had to do it for my dear **pixie** since she asked! just really tiny shallura drabbles from my tumblr.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she calls to god, but i also listen. a music prompt [from tumblr](http://stellatiate.tumblr.com/post/148455700895/).

The ache in his chest when he first sees her is something hard to wield, but Shiro knows how to suppress those feelings. He is strong, and he has always done so. But still, when he peeks in on Allura falling asleep at the central command station, it soothes the unraveled mess of feelings climbing their way out of his ribs. The lights glimmer across her hair, painting streaks of color in the bone-white of her curls, and Shiro touches his soft hand to her shoulder.

“Have you slept?” She mumbles through a slack mouth, eyes blinking sleepily to focus onto him. Shiro crouches down beside her, studies the lines of her face instead of offering an answer. Jealousy stabs at his stomach, low and unrelenting, because she can always afford to be so selfless despite everything else. His thoughts distract him from Allura’s creeping closeness, until her arms are slung around his shoulders, and her nose brushes against his neck.

“S’time for bed, Shiro.” And though it has been several nights like this, Shiro’s cheeks still flood with warmth. He doesn’t remember the first time, just the feeling of shame that swept over him when he’d woken Allura with his anguished cries, and how she’d held him in her arms until he fell asleep. They’d been sleeping together—a label that burns the tips of Shiro’s ears when he thinks about the implications—until he’d lost her, and he couldn’t sleep without her. Although it seems that she needs him to put her to bed, and is always the one to crawl into his room in the middle of the night without asking, he suspects Allura knows he needs this more than she does.

He holds her close for a split second, allows himself to continue to be selfish, before he resolves himself to carry her to bed.


	2. the seventh night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the first time and the last time. from a [tumblr prompt](http://stellatiate.tumblr.com/post/150923069260/anonymous-asked-anything-and-everything), naturally. vaguely nsfw because of implications.

On the seventh night, he notices a change.

The two of them are entwined with each other the way they’ve been for the past few days, with Allura’s kneeling in the space between his legs and his hands a steady presence at her waist. There’s something about her that makes intimacy seem like second nature, as if she is absent of all of the pretenses and fear of caring about others. Her heart is so open, and Shiro is jealous of her for it.

But something is different because tonight, she reaches for his hands, and instead of pressing their palms together, she lets her touch travel across his forearms.

“Shiro,” she says meekly, leaning away from him, “I don’t think this is a good idea anymore.”

The space between them is unbearably wide in that moment. He doesn’t say anything immediately, but the shadowy part of his consciousness bubbles up with a malevolent wrath, ready to burn away all of the parts of him that had thought this could be something, between the two of them.

Allura doesn’t say anything else, but her hands have reached his shoulders. Shiro feels the way her lifeline clamps down at the joint of his shoulder, where the welded arm meets soft flesh, and one of her hands presses up against his cheek.

“You’re too important, and I—” Her voice cracks and Shiro tries to find her gaze in the dimly lit room; when he locks onto her eyes, they almost glow in the night. “If I had to sacrifice myself again, for the sake of Voltron, I wouldn’t hesitate again. And I can’t hurt you like that.”

On the seventh night, he decides he doesn’t _care_ anymore.

There’s something about her that makes intimacy seem like second nature, so when he pulls her by her waist into his body, it is his way of trying to understand. Shiro’s life is already built upon sacrifices, his soul full to the brim with the things he owes to the world.

“You can’t keep me from trying to stop you, though,” he says adamantly, and she lifts her gaze to find his eyes. Her nearly glow in the twilight, and something about her stare that gives him the courage. He kisses her without thinking, because he can’t find the words to tell her what he wants to say anymore, and it only seems right to concede to her when she does everything with her whole heart.

He doesn’t even have time to fear that she won’t return the sentiment, because he can feel the insistent kiss she gives him back, the way she presses into him with an equal force. Allura scoots their bodies closer, and Shiro is abruptly hit with the urge to touch her.

It starts innocently enough, with his hands smoothing a pathway along her back, cradling her close. But she’s the one who finds his skin in the dark, her hands slipped into the waistband of his pants and tracing the line of his hips. She’s the one who lets her mouth fall and touch the pulse of his neck and the broad expanse of his shoulders.

Her gown is hiked up against her hips, and Shiro finds himself considering just how far this is going to go between them, especially since it is already over. It seems that she wonders the same thing when he hears her voice. “Just this once,” she whispers into the dark, and it’s all the permission that he needs.

On the seventh night,  he touches Allura with the hand he’s always cursed, and when she melts into his touch, it feels less unholy.


	3. restless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sometimes, she can't sleep. for the prompt, **restless**.

Shiro wakes up in the middle of the night to a myriad of sensations: fingertips on his shoulders, a soft mouth against his spine, a familiar leg pressed between his. In the dizzy moments before he can fully register the situation, he turns onto his side, his face immediately full of moon-silver hair.

“I can’t sleep,” she whispers faintly, then nudges her face closer to his. Allura’s overly affectionate coping mechanisms never really bother Shiro, especially when she is busy peppering his cheeks with kisses, but a small piece of him can’t help but be a little worried about her.

In the dimly lit room, he manages to find her eyes for a brief moment. “What’s wrong?” Her hand is soft against the side of his face and somehow she squirms closer, her forehead bumping into his. Shiro lifts his chin by a margin so that he can still see her, and her mouth catches on something to say.

Instead, she kisses him.

His one weakness in that moment is the way her lips are so gentle with his, coaxing them apart within split seconds and the warm insistence of her tongue in the corners of his mouth. Shiro isn’t sure whether he makes a noise or she does, just that the sound hums between their lips until Allura pulls away, her mouth tracing its way against his neck. His question is an afterthought now, especially with the way his blood stirs in the midnight air.

“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbles into his collarbone, and he doesn’t. Allura hooks one of her legs behind his, and then she pulls herself up. The vision of her rising from her space in their sheets to straddling him around the waist is almost enough to completely distract him, but with her palms against his bare chest, her hair a glittering halo around her face, he can’t help it.

He reaches up and pats the top of her hands carefully, watching her with hooded eyes. “I love you, you know,” he says. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I love you.”

If he wasn’t watching her, he wouldn’t have noticed the brief slump of her shoulders, the soft sigh she breathes out before she leans down towards him. But he does, and it makes her kiss much more sweeter for the relief.


	4. move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just a few more minutes in bed. for the prompt, **move**.

Shiro wakes up with a noticeable weight pressing him down into the sheets, an observation that causes a minor panic until he notices the culprit. Allura’s hair catches all of the sunlight from the windows and reflects it into his face, which makes it even more difficult for him to focus his sleepy eyes onto anything in their bedroom. His muscles feel taut and knotted, but when Shiro stretches his body underneath hers to relieve some of the pressure, she only winds herself closer.

Somehow, in the middle of her sleep, Allura shifted her entire body to splay across his, with her legs artfully twined between his and her head resting in the center of his chest. His movements only cause her hands to clench, her nails pressing into his skin slightly.

The hum of her dazed voice is what meets him the moment he tries to slide from beneath her. “You can’t,” she says softly, and then nestles her face into his bare chest. Shiro catches himself in one of those tender moments where all he can do is look at the shape of her closed eyes and the corners of her mouth and the softness of her cheeks and call himself lucky, until he’s met with the crystal color of one of her peeking eyes.

A yawn presses from the edge of her lips, and screws her eye shut for a moment. “Where’re you going?” She asks with a soft, sleep-drunk voice, and presses her mouth into the crook of her shoulder. The feather-soft touch gives Shiro a light sensation that he almost wants to call ticklish, but the cut of her teeth morphs the intentions from fun to flirtatious, and causes him to turn his head towards her.

“Nowhere, now,” he mumbles, nudging at her until he’s content with his lips resting against her forehead. Something tells him, though, that none of this was an accident.


	5. order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sometimes there is peace within the disorder. for the prompt, **order**.

He can tell when she finally comes to bed that there is something on her mind. Shiro doesn’t want to disrupt the routine of her night, so when she crawls into his lap and rests her cheek to his chest, he simply loses himself in the glittering ocean of her hair under the moonlight, abandoning his book on the bedside table.

But Allura doesn’t last long in silence. He’s not sure what possesses her to, but she shifts in his lap until her eyes are fixed on his, and he can only catch her gaze for a fleeting second before she presses a kiss to his mouth. They’ve been more frequent, the tokens of affection, and as much as he wants to be startled by the kiss, he leans into her more than he intends to.

They dance this same dance a few times throughout the week; one of them kisses the other, but it is always Shiro who pulls away first, cheeks red with touches of shame, and apologies waiting behind his lips instead. And Allura, forever patient, ready to kiss away his apologies and content with falling asleep at his side.

There is a determination that tastes like cooper in her mouth, though. Her kiss is insistent, and Shiro wants to ignore the way she curves her hips down into his lap, but his mind is foggy so he _can’t_. Her fingers are gentle against his jaw and he can feel the pinch of her fingertips as she draws him out of the kiss.

For a moment, he thinks she’s finished. “Hey,” she says, her voice husky in a foreign tone, “I want this. I want to be with you.” Her words sink into his heart like a stone, and Shiro hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear her say it until she’d said it.

When he kisses her after, it makes her mouth taste even sweeter.


	6. thanks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just the little touches are enough. for the prompt, **thanks**.

“Are you sure you don’t want someone else to do this?”

His hand rests against her bare shoulder and Allura sighs for what feels like the millionth time in the last thirty seconds. Shiro holds a fistful of her hair in his other hand and seems to be even more hesitant about taking a tighter hold. She doesn’t turn around for fear of pulling her own hair, but she tips her head back so she can catch a sliver of his face.

“I’m sure,” she encourages, a smile blooming across her lips, “I asked you, didn’t I?” She can feel his fingers clench because of their hold in her hair, but then they release, and he begins to drag them through her curls. Every few seconds, she winces at a hair pulled beneath his nails or caught in the metal of his knuckles, but his fingertips against her scalp is soothing.

When she closes her eyes, she can hear Shiro’s mumblings with much more clarity: “You could’ve asked Pidge, you know. She’s a girl. At least she knows what braids are supposed to look like. I haven’t done this in—Christ, who knows how long…”

It isn’t until she lets loose a giggle that he realizes she can hear him, and if she could picture his face, the shocked blush on his cheeks would be enough of a representation of how his rants came across. After a few more moments of Shiro lightly pulling the strands of her hair together, he taps her shoulder.

Allura tips her head back again, and she can feel the plait brush between her shoulders. “I think I’m done,” he says sheepishly, his fingers sailing over the ridges of her brand new braid before falling back onto her shoulder. There’s something gentle in his touch and it warms her, making her nervous all the same. Her smile is wide, stretched enough to make her eyes shine through narrowed lids.

“Thank you,” she says softly, reaching her hair back to touch the edge of her braid, and unable to shake the feeling of something much more intimate taking place in her simple request.


	7. close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's no such thing as too close, just not close enough. from a [tumblr prompt](http://stellatiate.tumblr.com/post/153154598465/). very nsfw, contains breath play because i'm evil.

“I trust you,” Shiro whispers. In their dimly lit room, the vision of Allura straddling his waist is as close proximity to a religion as he thinks he has ever been in his life. The glow of the candles makes her skin shimmer bronze and when she leans forward with her palms on his chest, her hair seems to glow, too.

Her eyes are the only part of her that darken, though Shiro suspects there are reasons for it. Her nails scratch at the base of his throat, an invitation that sends a shiver through him. He swallows his nerves down and locks his gaze onto hers.

It’s the signal that she needs, the one that she’s been waiting for. Her hips wind slowly over his, and Shiro groans at the pressure building in his throat. His body shifts under hers, desperate to match the pace of her slow grinding. Allura’s nails bite into the sides of his neck and he can feel her grip tightening even further, until the only thing between the tiny black spaces in Shiro’s sight are prickles of arousal.

“Hey,” she rasps and her palms at his throat release their hold. Allura leans into him with her hands cupping his face and presses kisses against his lips, open-mouthed and fleeting. His lungs expand greedily, a stretch that reminds him of the burn from cigarette smoke, and when he laughs, it sounds differently in his ears.

Her body is still too much of a distraction and the throb of his erection is a heady tempo set to match the pulse of heat between her legs. Shiro jerks his hips up, a rough motion he repeats over and over, until her hands close over his throat again. He can’t help the grin, but this time, she stares into his eyes. He can hear her breathing heavily as she chokes him, her eyes dark and his heartbeat pounding in his ears

It isn’t as slow and gradual as she had been the first time, and Shiro finds the pattern of her hips and matches it with his own. The pleasure leaves his throat straining with moans that barely echo in the night air.

When she alleviates the pressure for a second time, Shiro catches her before she can shower him with kisses again. Instead, he kisses her firmly, his tongue lapping softly at the inside of her mouth with his breath trapped between her lips. Allura pulls away first and Shiro can’t help but start panting, his head tipped back against the pillows.

He opens his eyes and Allura is smirking down at him, her nails dragging slowly across his chest. Her eyes are bright and mischievous now, and he can feel her touch between their hips, pulling at his clothes. She tips her head to the side, flicking her curls over her shoulder, and squeezes his cock.

It is the first moment all night he thinks he’s truly lost his breath.


	8. waiting (is the hardest part)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> her patience wears a little too thin. from a [tumblr prompt](http://stellatiate.tumblr.com/post/153458238640/). also slightly nsfw because masturbation. i warned you.

Shiro knows Allura isn’t trying to distract him. After all, he’d stressed to her how important it was that he finish his proposal before the end of the night so it would be presentable for the morning.

So, when she prances into their bedroom to kiss him goodnight, he knows it isn’t with any mischief. It’s cute, the way she presses a small kiss to the back of his head with a playful pull of his bangs. But then she grabs him by the chin, pulls his face away from the monitor, and kisses him hard enough to wake up every nerve in his body.

His mouth drops open in shock. Allura grins before she pokes her tongue into his open mouth and then pulls away again. And worst of all, she climbs underneath the covers afterwards.

He turns his attention back to his work but everything seems off. Every word he types afterwards seems like an ill fit and his brain keeps trying to tell him he’s tired—enticing him into crawling into bed with Allura—but he _knows_ he isn’t. Not even close. Not to mention he isn’t even _close_ to finished with his proposal and considering it is due in the morning, he’s not exactly at liberty to take a break.

Allura makes a noise from bed and he can hear her rustling in the sheets, and he closes his laptop with a sigh. The way her breath skips sends his mind into a dizzying fog because he _knows_ what she’s doing before he can push himself out of his chair and reach for the sheets.

“I wanted to wait for you,” she sighs, her eyes closed, but Shiro can’t stop staring at her when he finally pulls the sheets away. With her fingers beneath the hem of her underwear, the rhythmic roll of her hips matches the infuriating pulse he can feel pressing at his groin suddenly. “I— _tried_ —to wait.”

Her breath catches on the word and her voice cracks, which is all the incentive Shiro needs. He slips into bed with her, a hand pressed at the side of her head. He leans onto his forearm, his eyes still roving her body, and he uses his other hand to pry hers away.

He can’t avoid taking a break now. “Now,” he says, pressing a kiss to her neck and soaking himself in the moan she lets out, “you know I don’t like to keep you waiting.”


	9. when it feels like christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there are just some traditions that cannot be broken. from a [tumblr prompt](http://stellatiate.tumblr.com/post/154056747360/), the most adorable prompt.

The small table in their apartment is full of clutter today for a different reason than usual. Allura straddles a chair at the opposite side of the table, setting down two mugs on the table as she gets comfortable. She leaves her arms folded on the back of the chair and watches him curiously. Several boxes are scattered around Shiro and he works carefully with a piping bag in his hands.

“You used to build this house every year?” Absently, she sways her head back and forth, feeling her hair rub along the back of her sweater. Shiro glances up at her from between dollops of icing and can’t help but smile at how adorable she looks, her eyes wide and curious.

“When I had the time.” He presses a finger into the side of his carefully crafted gingerbread house and uses the icing to stick the sides together more effectively. “It was one of the good traditions I used to have with my family.”

Talking about family always seems to stilt conversation between the two of them for various reasons, but today, it feels a little more open. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Allura nudge the mug across the table so that it’s closer to him. Earlier that week, they’d gone shopping for decorations, and she’d picked out two matching cocoa mugs to take home with the joke that her renowned recipe for boiling water would finally come in handy this holiday season.

Shiro lifts the mug and curls his palms around the warmth almost immediately. The entire top layer of the cocoa is frothy with melted marshmallows and whipped cream, and Allura reaches over into his home designing space to pluck some gumdrops out of a bag. Grinning, she drops them onto the sweet layer of her drink and lifts it to her mouth.

“We can keep this tradition,” Allura says sweetly, and Shiro finds his cheeks flushed when he looks over at her and she’s already staring at him. There’s something about the look in her eyes that warms him all over. He hopes he always has the time to make gingerbread houses with her from now on.


	10. tremble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things are complicated before they start sleeping together. for the prompt, **tremble**.

Sleeping in the same bed with Shiro for little over a week is an ongoing adventure for Allura and each day, she finds herself uncovering some new information about him. Her feelings towards him are as tangled and complex as ever, but being close to him in the vulnerable moments between twilight and dawn seem to offer small bits of clarity, splintered glass pieces for her to keep and observe.

There are nights where Shiro sleeps soundlessly and Allura rests her cheek on his chest selfishly, willing herself to count the rhythm of his heartbeats just to make sure he is still with her. Some nights, Allura can’t sleep so she lets him fall asleep in her lap, a book carefully lofted in the crook of her elbow while he sleeps. When he can’t sleep, he lies beside her and strokes her hair with his fingertips, humming softly.

And then there are nights like tonight, where he can’t sleep and Allura falls asleep to his hands in her hair. Where he finally falls asleep, but Allura wakes up to his terror. His hands are clenched in a knot of her hair and she winces when she ducks down to pull his hand free.

She crawls into his lap, whispering his name softly. Allura wraps her arms around his shoulders and pulls him up, shifts him backwards until he is leaning against the wall. She is careful to keep her voice quiet, but insistent as she holds his face in her hands until he wakes up.

Allura can almost see him bite down on the scream in his mouth, his eyes wide. Beneath her, his muscles tremble from being seized in his dreams, and he stares into her eyes. Something about the staring usually grounds him, but instead, he lifts his hands so that they brush over her cheeks and slide into her hair again. Allura can’t help the subconscious flinch at his movements, but now that he is awake, she trusts him to be careful. His eyes are still unfocused, so when he tilts towards her, she suspects he may just curl into an embrace.

He kisses her instead.

His lips are smooth and dry, but his tongue presses softly at her bottom lip, and Allura is sure that her brain is malfunctioning because she doesn’t know _what to do_. All of the messy feelings she’d been trying to sort out only seem to go into overdrive—she is more nervous and more infatuated and more annoyed and more shy than she has ever been in front of him.

Shiro pulls away from her and exhales like he’s finally stopped drowning, but Allura can’t find the voice to ask him if he’s okay and what he’d do that for, anyway? It seems even more out of place when she remembers that he’d been in the middle of a nightmare, but then his face darkens and he starts mumbling apologies to her.

He moves from beneath her careful positioning to get up and something in her chest rises with panic. Allura reaches through the dark and grabs the hard metal of his wrist to pull him back. All she wants to do is pretend it hadn’t happened so that they can fall back asleep, and _maybe_ talk about it in the morning, when things make a little bit more sense.

She kisses him instead.


End file.
